This February 3, 2026 marks three years since Paco Rabanne left us. Passed away in 2023 in Portsall, in Finistère, at the age of 88, the Franco-Spanish couturier leaves behind a double imprint.
One is that of a visionary designer who revolutionized fashion in the 1960s, and the other, that of a media figure fascinated by the esoteric, whose statements never quite managed to eclipse his talent.
Because before being associated with prophecies and past lives, Paco Rabanne was first a striking aesthetic shock.
Paco Rabanne Starts Strong
In February 1966, he unveiled his first collection, titled “Manifiesto”, at the George V hotel in Paris: “12 wearable gowns in contemporary materials”. Sequins, metal rings, Rhodoïd plates… Couture becomes a futuristic armor. The show, set to a score by Pierre Boulez, was also among the first to create a true auditory atmosphere, a total spectacle. Coco Chanel, both intrigued and amused, nicknamed him “the metallurgist”.
But as the decades passed, another facet increasingly came to the fore: Paco Rabanne, the mystic. On television, especially on Thierry Ardisson’s program in May 1999, he offered a cascade of perplexing confidences. He claimed to have lived multiple past lives, including one as a prostitute under Louis XV, said he had known Jesus, seen God three times, been visited by aliens, and even been involved in the assassination of Tutankhamen. He also asserted he was aged… 75,000 years. Remarks that fascinate as much as they worry, feeding his image of a creator who is possessed. Sometimes, as on the set of Tout le monde en parle, the laughter is collective, and Paco Rabanne is a most willing participant.
Paris Destroyed?
The episode most notable remains his 1999 prophecy. In his book 1999, the Sky Fire, after visions he had from adolescence and his own reading of Nostradamus, he announces that the Mir space station should crash into Paris on August 11, 1999, the day of a solar eclipse. Debris were also said to fall on several towns in Gers: Auch, Mirande, Condom… He even goes as far as to declare that he would leave Paris at that time, close his stores and put his staff on leave. “I absolutely had to warn people,” he explains, saying he was ready to stake his honor.
In Gers, the reaction is far from mystical. Local officials denounce the statements as potentially harmful to the department’s image and tourism. The president of the General Council, Philippe Martin, contemplates legal action and mockingly invites the designer to come to the August 11 Jazz in Marciac festival. Skeptics even organize an “
He Had Admitted His Mistake
In the face of the non-event, Paco Rabanne eventually acknowledged his error, while continuing to defend the validity of the prophecies he believed were misinterpreted. The episode permanently tarnished his image with the general public and the media. From then on, he appeared more often discussing the paranormal than haute couture, even though he had dressed cinema, influenced an entire generation of designers, and imposed a radical vision of modernity.
This tension between creative genius and unconventional beliefs sums up the man. Trained as an architect, the son of a mother who had worked at Balenciaga, Paco Rabanne always looked forward in fashion, while seeming to search elsewhere—for answers in mysticism, the cosmos, the invisible. For him, the metal dress and the apocalyptic prophecy belonged to the same imaginary: that of a world in flux.
Three years after his death, the man continues to divide opinion. Was he an misunderstood visionary, a sincere mystic, or a designer outpaced by his own beliefs? Probably a bit of all three. One thing is certain: Paco Rabanne never left anyone indifferent. In fashion as on television, he cultivated the extreme—even in his words.
Karla Miller RADIO
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